Engaging with sustainability through collaborative and transdisciplinary approaches to education

Byrne, Edmond P.; Mullally, Gerard

Engaging with sustainability through collaborative and transdisciplinary approaches to education

dc.contributor.author	Byrne, Edmond P.
dc.contributor.author	Mullally, Gerard
dc.date.accessioned	2016-04-21T10:45:39Z
dc.date.available	2016-04-21T10:45:39Z
dc.date.issued	2015-06
dc.date.updated	2015-10-29T13:34:09Z
dc.description.abstract	Sustainability is a normative topic framed by disciplinary perspectives. This can be problematic as the tools that are used and applied to meta-problems and ‘grand challenges’ associated with societal (un)sustainability, and which may result in proposed ‘sustainable solutions’, are framed through the lens of the ‘object world’ disciplinarian. Traditional engineering education and practice has tended to frame problems in narrow techno-economic terms, often neglecting broader social, environmental, ethical and political issues; or what might be termed the social complexities of problems (Bucciarelli, 2008; Mulder et al., 2012). This reductionist approach has sought to close down risk and uncertainty through deterministic modelling and design, resulting in frameworks/models which provide an air of misplaced confidence but which are incapable of accounting for (or recognising) unknowability, and can thus lead to behaviour which ironically, results in increased fragility, rather than promoting increased robustness or resilience. Researchers in the social sciences and humanities are inherently more comfortable and adept with dealing with complexity, uncertainty and unknowability. This paper is posited in this context, whereby chemical engineering and sociology students taking respective disciplinary sustainability/environmental modules were brought together to work on a common assignment dealing with some aspect of sustainability. This paper reflects on this collaborative exercise, including the experiences of the students themselves, alongside some challenges and successes. It concludes that transdisciplinary approaches to learning are not just desirable in addressing wicked and meta-problems when addressing challenges of (un)sustainability, but represent a sine qua non for building the social capacity in confronting these issues.	en
dc.description.status	Peer reviewed	en
dc.description.uri	http://eesd15.engineering.ubc.ca/	en
dc.description.version	Accepted Version	en
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf	en
dc.identifier.citation	Byrne, E.P., and Mullally, G (2015) "Engaging with sustainability through collaborative and transdisciplinary approaches to education", EESD15 7th Conference on Engineering Education for Sustainable Development, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, 9-12 June. doi: 10.14288/1.0064725	en
dc.identifier.doi	10.14288/1.0064725
dc.identifier.endpage	029-8	en
dc.identifier.startpage	029-1	en
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/10468/2474
dc.language.iso	en	en
dc.publisher	University of British Columbia	en
dc.relation.ispartof	EESD15 – The Seventh International Conference on Engineering Education for Sustainable Development, 9-12 June 2015, Vancouver, Canada
dc.relation.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/2429/53757
dc.rights	© 2015, Edmond P. Byrne and Gerard Mullally.	en
dc.subject	Sustainability	en
dc.subject	Transdisciplinary	en
dc.subject	Education	en
dc.subject	Engineering	en
dc.title	Engaging with sustainability through collaborative and transdisciplinary approaches to education	en
dc.type	Conference item	en